Descriptions made in this section merely provide background information of embodiments of the present invention and do not constitute conventional art.
In general, a wireless network has a point-to-point topology or a star, that is, point-to-multipoint, topology, but a wireless network which has a mesh, that is, multipoint-to-multipoint, structure like a wired network has been attracting attention recently.
A wireless mesh network may be easily extended without connection to a wired network and has resultant merits in flexibility and extendability, such as speed and economic efficiency in network establishment, redundancy provided by multiple paths, and so on.
In an existing wired network environment, a signal is connected through a repeater or a wireless router referred to as an access point (AP), and all APs are connected in a wired manner.
On the other hand, in a mesh network, wireless communication routers which will serve as antennas like existing wireless communication base stations (BSs) become mesh nodes and wirelessly connect all sections as long as a representative AP is connected in a wired manner. In this way, the structure of a wired mesh network may also be implemented in a wireless network. Thus, a mesh network which overcomes a limitation of an existing wireless local area network (WLAN), has appeared.
Also, with the development of mobile communication networks and specifications of terminals, a mobile communication terminal has gone beyond the existing scope of a simple communication device or information providing device to become a necessary possession of contemporary people, and is evolving into a total entertainment device.
Further, technologies for performing short-range wireless communication between mobile communication terminals close to each other are rapidly developing, and one of the short-range wireless communication technologies is Bluetooth communication.
Bluetooth communication has evolved again and again, and the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology (Bluetooth 4.0) is widely being used in smart phones, retail geofencing, mobile payment, and so on. The BLE technology consumes less power than a standard Bluetooth wireless connection.
Also, there is ongoing development of a service method for providing various types of information to a mobile communication terminal of a user using a beacon which uses Bluetooth communication, and cases of constructing a mesh network using a beacon device which uses Bluetooth communication are increasing.
In such a wireless mesh network, when there are a plurality of beacon devices forming the mesh network and the beacon devices simultaneously transmit beacon signals through the same channel, the beacon devices may interfere with each other's signals.
Consequently, a method of efficiently adjusting a network setting is required so that beacon signals are transmitted while interference between adjacent beacon devices is prevented.